Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 362

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 362
After sending away the Haesabang group.
I found myself with a moment alone.
‘I’m exhausted, as expected.’
Treating patients was certainly not easy work, but dealing with people proved far more draining.
It was something I had often experienced back on Earth as well.
Treating people meant constantly encountering them.
Fundamentally, those who dislike humanity itself struggle to become good doctors.
Patients with varied circumstances and guardians with diverse temperaments.
The political dynamics within the medical institution.
Whether to prioritize treating patients whose cases would benefit research, or those who urgently needed the treatment.
Established medications with insurance coverage versus new drugs without coverage but fewer side effects.
At countless crossroads, I had to make choices, again and again.
And the responsibility for those choices fell squarely upon the attending physician’s shoulders.
‘It’s not so different here.’
Regardless, dealing with humanity proved harder than treating the body—that remained unchanged.
The advantage of the modern era was… at least patients didn’t draw blades demanding their loved ones be handed over…
‘Ah, but that happened too.’
I had witnessed families engage in extreme conflict over an elderly patient’s inheritance.
The elderly patient suffered from Alzheimer’s.
The children fought before their father over who would serve as his guardian.
Police eventually had to intervene.
‘Is that also the nature of human affairs?’
The irony was that none of the children truly wished for their father’s recovery.
To them, their father had to be terminal.
And when the father regained clarity, he refused life-sustaining treatment, desperate to die as soon as possible.
As a doctor, I had endured profound anguish in that moment.
Yes.
A doctor’s work was to treat illness and help prolong life.
Yet people lived entangled in countless inescapable connections, making even simple treatment unbearable at times.
‘Gong Yu-bing’s situation has become problematic.’
Because I had intervened appropriately, Hyeolseonggyo was forced to abandon the Poison Master’s corpse and Tugoe’s body they had nearly secured.
But if they had simply clicked their tongues and left saying ‘Well, we couldn’t obtain it, so it can’t be helped,’ they wouldn’t be Hyeolseonggyo.
Now her disfigurement was known throughout the political factions.
Tugoe, befitting the epithet ‘Monster,’ could manage his own body and more, but his young granddaughter, untrained in martial arts, could not endure it.
Now Gong Yu-bing would either wander forever wearing a human skin mask, or be kidnapped somewhere in the political factions and used as leverage against Tugoe.
If fortune turned cruel, a warrior with a grudge against Tugoe might simply kill her.
I had treated her body, but her reality was only now beginning.
The very thing Tugoe most feared and wished to avoid had become reality.
‘Perhaps it would be better to suggest she seek employment at Baekrin Uiseon?’
Gong Yu-bing was merely a minor character who died quickly in the novel, so she had even less presence than Tugoe.
What her special skills were, I couldn’t say.
Baekrin Uiseon had a system to protect the families of its members.
Once Tugoe was employed, we could extend that protection to Gong Yu-bing as well.
No matter how formidable a demon king who scattered blood calamities might be, once she entrusted herself to a major clan under the guise of settling down, there would be no solution.
‘If we hide her within the Medical Guild, it should be fine.’
By teaching her the art of changing appearance and altering her looks gradually over five years, or having me as a doctor change her features bit by bit over roughly five years, I was confident that even Hao-mun or Gaebang wouldn’t be able to find her.
‘However… the question is whether Tugoe will accept it.’
Once she entered the Medical Guild, stealing would no longer be possible.
Of course, there might be occasions to quietly borrow certain items(?), but that would remain strictly ‘unofficial’ work.
Official duties would involve transporting patients and medicinal materials—logistics-related tasks.
‘That’s a win for us, right?’
Among our patients, even those at the level of Jang Mun-in in their sixties had so many hidden experts that patient transport posed significant challenges.
Since they couldn’t directly assault Baekrin Uiseon, they targeted the patient transport routes.
But what would happen if Tugoe, who practiced Xukongjubu and even Dengpingdosu, were involved?
‘…Yes. This is the Gangho version of a drone.’
Following the human motor came the human drone!
I had no intention of sparking an industrial revolution in a world with qi and the Five Elements.
In a world where humans were far more efficient than coal, wasn’t that obvious?
‘But I’m not sure if it’s okay for her to officially stop stealing… hmm.’
Maybe I could gently persuade her by bringing up her granddaughter.
That way, I could also ensure patient safety…
‘She’s someone who values the Way of the Thief…’
* * *
“Of course it’s good! I’m actually in favor of it.”
“Pardon?”
Before I could even finish speaking, Tugoe answered immediately.
“You won’t be able to continue your work as a thief anymore…”
“…Officially, that is. But that doesn’t matter, does it? I’m the one who stole Dalgi’s records from the Wudang Sect last time anyway.”
“Pfft!”
I spat out the tea I was drinking.
Cough, cough.
After coughing for a while, I asked.
“You stole it, Tugoe?”
Back then, when we obtained ‘that item’ connected to Dalgi from the Wudang Sect, my Master had calmly said this.
-Samjeolchuho provided great assistance. She and her friends, and her friends’ friends, all provided great help.
Was Wuying Touguai… a friend of Samjeolchuho, or a friend of a friend?
I mumbled in confusion for a long time.
‘Wow, the Gangho is both vast and narrow.’
One mystery from the past had been solved this way.
Even if the Wudang Sect was away at the time, stealing a single treasure would have required considerable effort.
What’s more frightening is that even after the theft, no one realized anything had been stolen.
At that time, Samjeolchuho’s connections must have been quite extensive. Indeed, the “friend of a friend” among wanderers is terrifying.
…That’s what I thought at the time.
I never imagined she was connected to Wuying Touguai.
She continued speaking.
“With Hyeolrin… no, Baek Rin-ui-seon, there was an old debt of gratitude from the past. As for Samjeolchuho, her heart in searching for her younger sibling was so earnest that helping her a few times created a connection. Well, theft is a specialty, isn’t it? The hardest part comes after the theft. Since Baek Rin handles that as well, there was nothing impossible about it.”
“…I… I see.”
She continued speaking calmly.
“Growing old through thievery, many thoughts came to me. What truly is the Way? Though I am but a lowly thief, I have my pride.”
“What kind of pride is that?”
“The pride of one who covets objects but not human lives. To take things stored away in hidden chambers, gathering only dust, and bring them to light—is that not the work of us gentlemen of the rafters? In that process, I have rarely stained my hands with blood.”
She had not entirely abstained from killing either.
It seemed there were times when she deployed lethal techniques when facing death.
However, such instances were rare enough to count on one’s fingers.
Usually, she would abandon the object rather than take a life.
“If I were to formally renounce my work as Tugoe, Sajo would be shocked, saying I had abandoned the Way of the thief. But if my Shifu were to hear of it, I believe he would speak differently, young one.”
“….”
A small tea room.
With the wind, the sound of wind chimes rang out softly.
In the small silence.
Though only two of us occupied the tea room, it felt full.
Tugoe spoke, savoring the deep aroma of tea.
“The gentleman of the rafters’s Way is fundamentally about moving objects from place to place. Moving people from person to person, moving medicinal herbs from place to place—viewed broadly, these share the same principle.”
She smiled.
“Of course, five years from now, when my granddaughter grows and wishes to leave the Medical Guild, I could depart with her then. Perhaps… I might remain. But for these five years ahead. Yes.”
She narrowed her eyes.
Her face was clearly that of a young person, yet her eyes held the cunning of a seasoned warrior.
That gaze shone with clarity.
“…If that is the case, I would be pleased to have you stay as a guest.”
A guest retainer.
In Earth terms, a system that existed since the Spring and Autumn period.
Powerful families would provide food and money to those called guest retainers, treating them as honored visitors.
Of course, these guest retainers usually did no work and lounged about idly, but when the time came, they would stake their very lives to accomplish their tasks.
A famous historical example is the “Rooster-Crow and Dog-Bark” of Mengshang Jun from the Spring and Autumn period.
Literally, it means a thief skilled at imitating rooster and dog sounds.
It seems Mengshang Jun actually had such a guest retainer among his followers who was skilled at these animal sounds.
When Mengshang Jun served under the King of Qin and things went poorly, he faced a death crisis.
It was thanks to this guest retainer skilled at dog sounds that his life was saved.
‘The guest retainer skilled at dog sounds used that ability to steal the king’s leather coat and give it to his favored concubine to secure his release, and during their escape, the guest retainer skilled at rooster sounds helped them, or so the story goes?’
I mimicked the rooster’s crow loudly at dawn, and the gatekeeper, thinking it was a real rooster, opened the gate.
That’s how I managed to escape beyond the gate, or so the story goes.
Names related to the country’s name are slightly different, though.
True to the martial arts world, this place also has the same idioms and the guest system.
After such origins came about, administrators and powerful clans also took in guests.
The major sects and clans of Gangho also had the tradition of taking in guests like this.
However, perhaps due to somewhat secular reasons, sects rooted in religions like the Nine Sects and One Alliance found it difficult to implement.
Instead, clan-centered sects like the Eight Great Clans and mid-tier major sects based on Pyo Guk or merchant guilds regardless of religious affiliation actively utilized the guest system.
As a result.
They’re called masters, but have no particular affiliation.
And even though they have no ambitions in Gangho, those who seem somewhat useful often enter as guests.
“Of course… if I were to take in Tugoe as a guest, other sects wouldn’t stay quiet about it.”
She managed to open her mouth with difficulty.
What the name Tugoe means in Gangho.
And what it means for a sect to take in that Tugoe as a guest.
Jin Cheon-hee nodded calmly.
“The roots of this Medical Guild are not so weak as to be shaken by such things. If we were shaken by merely that, it would only be my shortcoming.”
Jin Cheon-hee fell into thought, then smiled faintly and added a word.
“I know that quite a few treasures have been sold off, but I also know that there are still many precious artifacts and divine items that haven’t leaked outside.”
“Things of immeasurable value. If they were to slip outside Gangho, a bloodstorm would ensue.”
Secret manuals, elixirs, hidden treasures.
To some extent, they could be sold as stolen goods, but if the items are significant enough to cause a bloodstorm, even that becomes difficult to handle.
The Golden King of the Golden Blood Hall is a man mad for money.
Yet he had the self-control to refuse without hesitation if maintenance costs exceeded the money he could gain.
And Tugoe as well deliberately did not leak even those items outside.
It was because of a certain aesthetic as a thief.
She was one who stole, not one who caused bloodstorms.
“Yes, those should be returned to the masters of each sect.”
“Whether that will allow us to wash our hands of this, I’m not sure.”
Jin Cheon-hee nodded.
“After that, the Baekrin Medical Guild will handle it.”
It was strange.
When this young man smiled with those blue eyes, somehow everything seemed like it would be just fine.
‘That’s right. That’s why medicine and madness coexist in him.’
Tugoe found this young man quite appealing.
Perhaps her path and this young man’s path shared many similarities.
That aesthetic especially.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————